Health Benefits Of Gaming

Need A Valid Excuse To Play Video Games? Here It Is.

When I was a kid, NES was the biggest video game system on the market and almost everyone I knew played Super Mario Bros. My parents hated the fact that I spent so much time playing video games, but one day, my big brother told me something that justified all those hours in front of the TV. “Playing video games increases your hand-eye coordination,” he said. It made sense. I was controlling with my hand what a little man on the screen was doing. It seemed that gaming wasn’t all bad, contrary to what my parents said. But don't just take my word for it:

Studying The Benefits

The negative effects of violent video games have been heavily studied. Recently, however, there has been a greater interest in looking at the benefits gaming can have on a person’s emotional, social and psychological health. Later this year, the American Psychological Association will be releasing the results of meta-study in its flagship journal American Psychologist, but a press release from November hinted at a few things.

Children who play video games, particularly shooter games, might have better memory, as well as visual-spatial and perceptive abilities, than those who don’t. Role-playing games tend to boost problem-solving skills, and a 2013 study found that students who play these games show higher creativity and better grades in school.

Gaming also teaches us how to accept failure. All those blown missions, failed attempts and humiliating deaths teach us how to come up with better solutions and learn from our mistakes. These skills are readily translated to real-life situations.

The findings are encouraging for avid gamers, but we will have to wait until the study is released before we can say anything definitive. At this point, we can at least say there are some benefits associated with gaming.

Gamification

Mark Baldwin is a psychology researcher at McGill University who studies the impacts of gaming. In research conducted with his graduate students, he is exploring the social effects that specially designed games can have. This research culminated in a company called Mindhabits Inc., which creates these unique games.

In one game, the user has to pick a smiling face out of a group of frowning faces. After doing this for long enough, Baldwin has found that it trains the mind to focus on the positive, instead of gravitating towards the negative, the latter of which is what most people tend to do. By retraining the mind in this way, the game lowers social stress levels, and increases self-esteem.